 Like for any other international court or tribunal, the ICC jurisdiction rests ultimately on the consent of the state's parties to the court's statute. But in order to know if the court has jurisdiction over certain persons accused to have committed certain crimes, one needs to combine various criteria and see if they meet. The court's jurisdiction must first be envisaged from a material point of view, what are the crimes under the ICC jurisdiction? It must also be envisaged from a temporal point of view, when were those crimes committed? Furthermore, the court's jurisdiction must be analysed from a spatial point of view, where did those crimes take place and also from a personal point of view, who comes within the jurisdiction of the court? It is therefore by combining the issues pertaining to the court's jurisdiction rationer matérieux, rationer temporis, rationer loci, and rationer personne, that one can have a clear picture of the court's jurisdiction and conclude that the court may prosecute certain persons or not. Furthermore, the ICC jurisdiction is regulated by the principle of complementarity that shall be explained later in this video. The ICC jurisdiction can also be extended by the UN Security Council or its exercise can be suspended by the same year in Oregon. And I'll come back on those two features later in the course. Let me turn to the jurisdiction rationer matérieux first. According to Article 5 of the ICC statute, the jurisdiction of the court is, I quote, limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. And those crimes are genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. The precise legal definitions of each of those crimes is to be found in the court's As completed by what is called the elements of crimes, which have been adopted by the assembly of the state's parties pursuant to Article 9 of the statute, and which assist in the interpretation and application of the definitions of crimes found in the statute. It is not possible to detail here what are the various constitutive elements of each of the crimes falling within the court's jurisdiction. However, the crime of aggression deserves a special mention because its definition has been added in the statute by amendments adopted by the assembly of state's parties in 2010 and which still need to be ratified by 30 state's parties at least. Moreover, the exercise of jurisdiction by the court over the crime of aggression is subject to a decision taken by two-thirds of the state parties after 1 January 2017. So as I'm speaking now, the rationer-mattery jurisdiction of the court is currently limited to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Moreover, and even if prosecution relates to some of those serious crimes, the court's jurisdiction is limited to cases of a sufficient gravity, lacking such gravity, the case can be found in admissible under Article 17 of the statute. The temporal jurisdiction of the court is regulated under Article 11 of the statute. Rationer temporis, the court has jurisdiction only with respect to crimes committed after the entry into force of this statute. In other words, crimes that occurred before 1 July 2002 do not come within the jurisdiction of the court. And for a state that has become party to the statute after 1 July 2002, the date to be taken into account is the date of the entry into force of the statute for that state. However, a new state party may make a declaration by which it accepts that the court exercises its jurisdiction with respect to crimes committed before the date it became bound by the statute. But the ultimate time limit backwards is 3 July 2002. And when it acceded to the ICC's statute in 2015, Palestine made such a declaration accepting the court's jurisdiction since 13 June 2014. Let me turn now to the ICC rationer-locky and rationer-personer jurisdiction because under Article 12 of the statute, the jurisdiction of the ICC is either territorial or personal or both. The court has jurisdiction over crimes that have either been committed on the territory of a state party or by extension on board a vessel or an aircraft that is registered in a state party. But the court has also jurisdiction over the persons having the nationality of any of the state's parties. So if a crime is committed on the territory of the other state party, by national of that state or by national of another state party, the court has jurisdiction. But the court has also jurisdiction if the crime that occurred on the territory of a state party has allegedly been committed by a person who does not have the nationality of any of the other state parties. Likewise, the court has jurisdiction over the nationals of states' parties when they commit crimes in the territories of states that are not party to the ICC. And the exception to the latter principle is to be found in Article 15, B-5 in relation to the crime of aggression. By the time it will be able to exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, the court will however have no jurisdiction over the nationals of a state which is not party to the statute even in case of the aggression that they are accused of took place on the territory of a state party. Rationer-Personnet, it must be added that the court has jurisdiction over persons provided that they have reached the age of 18 at the time of the alleged commission of the crime, Article 26. And if that is the case, the official capacity of the person accused or its status as head of state, head of government, etc., that status is irrelevant and no immunity either under internal law or under international law is an obstacle to the exercise of the court's jurisdiction, Article 27. In those cases of territorial or personal jurisdiction, the court exercises its jurisdiction either because a state party has referred the situation to the prosecutor and the state referral is regulated under Article 14 or because the prosecutor has initiated a prosecution on its own initiative that is Propriomoto in accordance with Article 15. The territorial and personal scope of the ICC can be extended by a resolution of the Security Council of the United Nations acting under Chapter 7 of the Charter. And during the last week of this course, we are going to study what is Chapter 7 and how the Security Council resolutions are adopted. But it is important to note already that under Article 13b of this ICC statute, the Security Council is entitled to refer to the ICC prosecutor, I quote, a situation in which one or more of such crimes appease to have been committed. And of course, the Security Council must act for that purpose under Chapter 7, having concluded that the situation constitutes a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace or an act of aggression. The Security Council has already referred two situations to the ICC, the crisis in Darfur under Resolution 1593 of 2005 and the situation in Libya under Resolution 1970 in 2011. In both cases, neither Sudan nor Libya are parties to the Rome Statute, but the Security Council has expanded the ICC jurisdiction to the situations which took place in those countries. And it is important to note that when it acts under Chapter 7 in order to expand the Court's jurisdiction, the Security Council may only refer to the prosecutor a situation. The Council may not refer the crimes committed by one side of the conflict and not the crimes committed by the other side or the crimes committed by certain persons only. The exercise by the Court of its jurisdiction is always subject to the principle of complementarity, even when it is seized by the Security Council. As opposed to the primacy enjoyed by the ICTY and the ICTR over national jurisdictions, the ICC only has a complementary jurisdiction. A case is inadmissible at the ICC if it is being duly investigated or prosecuted by a state which has jurisdiction over it. It is not important whether the state exercising jurisdiction is party to the ICC or not. However, and as stated under Article 17, if that state is unwilling or enabled generally to carry out the investigation or persecution, the ICC may exercise jurisdiction. In assessing the willingness of the state to conduct criminal proceedings against the accused, the Court looks into the motive of those proceedings, whether they are conducted in an impartial way and an independent way or not. If it appears that the domestic proceedings are not genuine and are only there to shield a person from its or her criminal responsibility, the sheer existence of such proceedings will not prevent the Court from exercising its jurisdiction. To the same extent, the principle of nebis inidem applies. A person cannot be tried by the ICC if he or she has already been tried by domestic Court provided that such trial was genuine. Article 20. On the basis of the complementarity principle, the appeals chamber confirmed in July 2014 the decision of the pretrial chamber, which ruled in October 2013, that the case against Abdullah al-Senusi, the former head of the Libyan military intelligence, that this case was inadmissible as it was subject to domestic proceedings conducted by the Libyan competent authorities and that Libya was willing and genuinely able to carry out such investigations. Finally, even if the Court has jurisdiction, as in N is entitled to exercise it, the UN Security Council may nevertheless decide to stay the investigation or prosecution for a renewable period of 12 months. Such deferral needs to be decided by resolution adopter under Chapter 7 of the Charter. The Security Council has thus as used this deferral powers under Article 16 of the ICC statute on two similar occasions. Under resolution 1422 in 2002 upon the suggestion of the United States, the Security Council requested that the nationals of a state not party to the Rome Statue who participate to UN established or authorized operations be not prosecuted. Such decision was extended for another year by resolution 1487 of 2003, but it has not been renewed further.